


The Truth About Five Minutes

by afterlithe



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-07
Updated: 2013-04-07
Packaged: 2017-12-07 20:08:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/752541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afterlithe/pseuds/afterlithe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s not hard, really, to take five minutes and turn it into twelve years, nor a quick hop to the moon into another two, when you’re built to cruise through all of time and space.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Truth About Five Minutes

The TARDIS knows the Doctor better than he would ever dare know himself.

Knows the dark alleyways of his soul, the corners of his mind where the sun never shines, all the pent up rage and anger that a thousand years and an infinite more losses can pour into even the best of men, and above all, this: he was never a good man.

He can be kind, loving, righteous, honourable even, but he was born into a race of living, breathing gods, a nation of entitlement if there ever was one – not delusionally so, mind, because in the end, they did rule over all of time and space, and when creation, in its entirety, is your backyard, it follows that you must be entitled to all that grows therein. And when you are the stuff of legends before you can utter your first syllable, your concept of morality is at best blurry in the corners, and the sands of time tend only to blur it further.

What has also been his saving grace, however, is his capacity for love – to love ferociously and destructively, selflessly and selfishly. Not everything or everyone, really, because two hearts are sometimes not better than one, and a stranger might say that he loved, loved, loved and lost, and loved again, but the cover is not the story. Because the love of the last Time Lord marks people, you see, marks their pasts and futures, and the marks call out the blue box. So if she could speak, she would tell you you’re wrong – it’s only that she makes sure his path crosses with all those he’s bound to love, ticking people off in what ultimately is a finite list.

First, at the very top of that list that’s really too short for a man of so many years, comes the universe, in all its madness and impossibilities. Once, for that love, he sacrificed all that he ever knew, destroyed the first sky he ever saw. And this, the TARDIS knows: only her doctor could hate himself so much for something so selfless.

She’s seen all his faces, the ones that were, the ones that will come, and the ones he will never wear. She’s seen him smile wearing all of them, smile sadly, brilliantly, smugly, lovingly, but his heart speaks to her even when his lips are silent, and she knows that behind the mask, he hasn’t smiled for a very, very long time. It would break her heart, but she has none – so it’s simply breaking her.

And so, when he’s once again said too many goodbyes for one set of lips, and traded them for another, so different yet still the same, it’s her who decides on the who, crashing, all smoke and flames, into the backyard of the Scottish girl in the English village that time forgot. Because she too knows what happens when he travels alone, and she knows, better than anyone, just how goddamn stubborn he can be. So she gives him something he cannot hope to resist.

She knows the why of it long before he does. The flame haired orphan, taken away from her roots, all alone yet so brave – Amelia Pond’s name is not the only thing about her that’s straight out of a fairy tale. The girl the universe poured itself into in dreams. She watches him run with her, laugh with her, shape himself around her. Sometimes she thinks that maybe, after all is said and done, Amy Pond deserved better all along.

But it’s the TARDIS and the Doctor, and she can’t resist, either. So she will give her to him, to be his. It’s not hard, really, to take five minutes and turn it into twelve years, nor a quick hop to the moon into another two, when you’re built to cruise through all of time and space. And she always takes him where he needs to go. She takes him not to a Amelia Pond who waited five minutes for him, but to Amy, who, after twelve years and four psychiatrist, another taste and another two years – her entire existence shaped by the raggedy man who fell out of the sky. She takes her to Amy Pond, who is already his. Because you see, the TARDIS knows the doctor better than he would ever dare know himself, and she knows, that even though he won't admit it, this is what he wanted even as he promised five minutes. Because whatever else he may be, and however well he might control the baser parts of his character, he was never a good man. 

And so, in the end, he does what the TARDIS always knew he would. He steals Amy Pond even as he stole her, before the world can force her to outgrow the raggedy man who never quite saw the point of growing up.


End file.
